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A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO
UNDERSTANDING AND USING B2B
CUSTOMER JOURNEYS
1st February 2023

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“Sometimes it’s the journey that
teaches you a lot about your
destination…
Drake
…And sometimes when you get there, you’ll
look back and you’ll realize that you wish
you could go there again because all the
experiences are the reason that you are
who you are today.”

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Agenda
• History of Customer Journeys
• Why the Sales Funnel was Always
Wrong
• The Buying Journey DNA
• Buying Style
• Customer Journey Mapping
• Next Steps

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Brief History of Customer Journeys
• Customer journey mapping was introduced to the world by Chip Bell
and Ron Zemke in their book, Service Wisdom (1989)
• Chip Bell says[1]:
– “The goal of customer journey mapping is to create and retain a
deep understanding of the customer’s experiences while he or she
is traversing the path taken between having a need and getting that
need met.
– Its intent is to ‘get inside the customer’s head’ to ‘see,’ and
therefore, understand the customer’s experiences.”

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What is a Customer
Journey?
• Our definition is:
– A customer journey is the
experiences that a customer has
while moving from awareness of a
product through purchase to the
time the customer no longer
interacts with the brand or product.
• It’s not just about what you do as a brand
• It’s not just pre-purchase
• A customer journey map just shows the
journey visually

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We Never Believed the Sales Funnel Concept, Did We?
Source: https://www.salesforce.com/in/blog/2022/06/sales-funnel.html

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Buying Decisions are Complex
Source: Forrester

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The Buying Journey DNA
Source: How Customers Buy…And Why They Don’t: Mapping and Managing the Buying Journey DNA. Lewis M.R. (2018)
Personas
Choice vs Value
Solution vs Product

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Buying Style
Source: How Customers Buy…And Why They Don’t: Mapping and Managing the Buying Journey DNA. Lewis M.R. (2018)

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What’s in a Customer Journey Map?
• Steps/Touchpoints
• Prospect actions
• Emotions
• Pain points
• Solutions
• As simple or complex as you want!
http://www.meghanabowen.design/spotify.html

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Simple Example Customer Journey Map
https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/how-to-build-customer-journey-maps

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Simple Customer Journey for Outbound Campaign
• Napier customer journey

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Customer Journeys can be Cycles
https://www.zendesk.co.uk/blog/fantastic-voyage-customer-journey-mapping-well-worth-effort/

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Real Customer Journeys have Many Stages/Touchpoints
https://www.slidesalad.com/product/customer-journey-maps-powerpoint-template-diagrams/

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Micro Journeys
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/micro-journeys-
what-why-do-you-need-them-natasha-stefos/

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Do I Always
Need this
Complexity?
• Complete customer journeys and
micro journeys are valuable, BUT
• Sometimes it’s OK to simplify
• And you’ll probably never find
every touchpoint in the journey, no
matter how hard you try

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What Do I Do Next?
• Think about customer journeys!
– Try to gain the customers’ perspective
– Remember that they are complex, especially for B2B
• Ask customers (do research)
• Ask if different personas and buying styles have different journeys
• Split journey into micro journeys
• Analyse stages where opportunities are lost or progress slows
– Fix problems and build marketing campaigns to accelerate prospect
velocity throughout the journey

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THANK YOU!
www.napierb2b.com
mike@napierb2b.com